I want to end this category of posts where I started — with structure. We have talked about scripting exercises, backstory development, prop replacement, character building, and the countless ways that writing transforms magic from a demonstration into an experience. All of these tools are powerful individually. But they do not become truly transformative until they serve a larger narrative structure — until the individual elements are organized into a story that the audience can follow, invest in, and remember.
The structure I want to discuss is not from magic. It is from Pixar.
I encountered Pixar’s story template during a consulting project — a branding workshop where we were trying to help a company tell its origin story more effectively. Someone in the room pulled up a document that had been circulating online for years: Pixar’s rules for storytelling, distilled from the studio’s decades of creating films that consistently move audiences to laughter, tears, and deep emotional engagement.
The template is this:
Once upon a time, there was ___. Every day, ___. One day, ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally, ___.
Six sentences. A complete narrative arc. Setup, routine, disruption, consequences, escalation, resolution. I had seen this template applied to business pitches, product launches, and brand narratives. But I had never thought to apply it to magic.
Until I did.
The Template in Theory
Let me break down what each element does, because understanding the mechanics is essential before applying the template.
“Once upon a time, there was ___.” This is the establishment of a world and a character. It tells the audience who they are watching and what the baseline reality looks like. In a film, this might be: “Once upon a time, there was a young girl named Riley who was happy and well-adjusted.” In a magic show, this might be: “Once upon a time, there was a consultant who discovered something strange about the way people make decisions.”
“Every day, ___.” This is the routine — the normal state of affairs before anything changes. It establishes what the character’s life looks like on a regular basis. It gives the audience a baseline to measure disruption against. “Every day, she went to school and made friends easily.” Or: “Every day, he traveled from city to city, sitting in meetings and reading rooms.”
“One day, ___.” This is the disruption. Something changes. Something unexpected happens. This is the inciting incident that sets the story in motion. “One day, her family moved to a new city.” Or: “One day, he realized he could read more than just the room.”
“Because of that, ___.” This is the consequence. The disruption creates a chain of events. The story is now in motion, and each event leads to the next. “Because of that, she lost her ability to feel joy.” Or: “Because of that, he started testing his ability in hotel rooms, with strangers, in situations where the stakes were real.”
The second “Because of that, ___” continues the chain. Consequences lead to further consequences. Tension builds. “Because of that, her other emotions tried to compensate and made things worse.” Or: “Because of that, he discovered that the ability was not entirely reliable — it worked most of the time, but not always, and the failures were as instructive as the successes.”
“Until finally, ___.” This is the resolution. The climax. The moment everything has been building toward. “Until finally, she learned that sadness was not the enemy — it was the key to growing up.” Or: “Until finally, tonight, in this room, he is going to test his ability one more time — with you.”
The Application to a Single Routine
I first applied the template to a single mentalism routine — one of the pieces in my corporate keynote show. The routine was well-rehearsed and got strong reactions, but it lacked narrative structure. It was a demonstration: I demonstrated an ability, the audience reacted, we moved on.
Here is what the template produced:
“Once upon a time, there was a strategy consultant who spent his days reading boardrooms. Every day, he noticed things about people that they did not notice about themselves — micro-expressions, behavioral patterns, the gap between what people said and what they meant. One day, he realized that his ability to read people went further than he had thought — further than body language, further than behavioral economics, into a territory he could not quite explain. Because of that, he started testing the edges of what he could perceive. Because of that, he discovered that under the right conditions, with the right focus, he could apparently detect what someone was thinking before they said it out loud. Until finally — tonight — he is standing in this room, in front of you, ready to try it again.”
This backstory arc was not delivered as a monologue. It was woven into the performance across several minutes, distributed across the routine’s opening, middle, and conclusion. The “once upon a time” was a single sentence in the introduction. The “every day” was a brief aside about my consulting work. The “one day” was a reference to a specific moment of discovery. The “because of that” chain was implied by the progression of the routine. And the “until finally” was the climax — the moment of revelation.
The structure gave the routine a shape that demonstrations lack. The audience was not just watching a trick. They were following a story. And stories, unlike demonstrations, have momentum. Each beat promises the next beat. Each “because of that” pulls the audience forward into “what happens next?” The resolution — the magical moment — arrives not as a surprise but as a fulfillment. The story promised a conclusion, and the magic delivered it.
The Application to a Full Show
The more ambitious application — the one that occupied me for weeks — was applying the Pixar template to my entire thirty-minute corporate keynote show. Not just a single routine. The whole thing.
This required me to think about my show as a story, not a set list. A set list is a sequence of routines. A story is a sequence of events connected by causality and building toward a resolution. The difference is enormous. A set list can be rearranged without consequence. A story cannot, because rearranging the events destroys the causal chain.
I sat in my home office in Austria with a whiteboard — the same kind I use for strategy consulting sessions — and I mapped my show onto the template.
“Once upon a time” — the opening. I establish who I am. Not a magician. A consultant. Someone who studies human behavior for a living. Someone who discovered something unexpected about the limits of perception. The audience meets a character, not a performer.
“Every day” — the baseline. I describe my work. Brief, specific, connected to the audience’s professional context. I reference the daily reality of reading rooms, making decisions under uncertainty, trying to predict what will happen next. The audience recognizes this world, because it is their world.
“One day” — the disruption. I tell the story of discovering magic — not the full autobiography, but the pivotal moment. The deck of cards purchased from ellusionist.com. The hotel room practice. The realization that the skills I used professionally — observation, pattern recognition, behavioral analysis — could be applied in a completely different domain. The audience understands that the magic they are about to see is not separate from the professional content. It is an extension of it.
“Because of that” — the chain. The first routine. The demonstration of an ability that connects to the “one day” discovery. The routine is the first consequence — the first evidence that the disruption was real. The audience is now inside the story, watching the consequences unfold.
The second “because of that” — the escalation. The routines increase in apparent impossibility. Each one pushes the ability further. Each one builds on the previous one, not just in terms of entertainment value but in terms of narrative logic. If the first routine showed basic perception, the second shows deeper perception. If the second showed deeper perception, the third shows something that borders on the inexplicable. The escalation is not just dramatic — it is causal. Each step leads logically to the next.
“Until finally” — the closer. The final routine. The culmination of everything the show has been building toward. The moment that resolves the narrative arc, answers the question posed in the opening, and delivers the payoff that the audience has been unconsciously waiting for since the “one day” moment.
What Changed
The restructured show was the most cohesive performance I had ever given. I tested it first at a private event in Graz — a smaller audience, about forty people, low stakes — and the difference was palpable.
The audience was not just entertained. They were engaged in the way that people are engaged by a good film or a good novel — leaning forward, following the thread, anticipating what came next. The transitions between routines were not gaps to be bridged. They were plot points — connective tissue that carried the story from one chapter to the next. The energy did not dip between routines because the narrative never stopped. The magic was the vehicle, but the story was the engine.
One specific moment stands out. Between the second and third routines, there was a transition — about thirty seconds — where I moved from one part of the stage to another and made a brief comment connecting what the audience had just seen to what they were about to see. In the old show, that transition was dead time. In the restructured show, it was the hinge of the story — the moment where the “because of that” chain escalated to its next level. The audience was so engrossed in the narrative that the transition got more attention than some of the magic. They were listening to the story, not waiting for the next trick.
After the show, an audience member said something that confirmed the approach was working: “It felt like one thing, not a bunch of separate things.” That was the Pixar template in action. The story template transforms a collection into a journey. And audiences remember journeys in a way they do not remember collections.
Pixar’s Other Rules
Two additional Pixar rules became important to my show design. The first: “You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.” This means the audience connects with effort, struggle, and vulnerability — not with perfection. In my show, I build in moments of visible effort. Moments where the outcome is genuinely uncertain. Moments where I acknowledge that what I am attempting is difficult and might not work. These moments — the trying — are what make the audience root for me. The successes mean more because the effort was visible.
The second: “What is your character comfortable with? Throw the opposite at them.” In my show, my character is comfortable reading people in professional settings. That is his baseline. His comfort zone. The magic pushes him outside that comfort zone — into situations where the reading goes further than expected, where the outcome exceeds what should be possible, where the rational explanation runs out. The tension between comfort and discomfort drives the story forward.
The Bridge Forward
This post is the last in this category — a long journey through advanced scripting and character development. We have covered scripting levels, plot versus effect, opening lines, naming, one-sentence descriptions, the three dots exercise, prop analysis, backstory, the five character questions, unexplained references, prop replacement, and now narrative structure.
All of it — every exercise, every framework, every principle — serves a single purpose: making the magic matter. Making it feel like something more than a demonstration. Making it feel like a story that the audience is part of, a story with characters they care about, in a world that feels real, moving toward a conclusion that rewards their attention.
The tools in this category came primarily from Pete McCabe’s work, with contributions from Brown, Regal, and the broader storytelling tradition. But the application — the testing, the failing, the adjusting, the discovering — that happened in hotel rooms across Austria, on stages in Vienna and Graz and Salzburg, in conversations with Adam Wilber about Vulpine Creations, and in the quiet hours after shows when I sat with my notebook and asked myself what worked and what did not.
The next category moves into different territory — the science of magic, the psychology and perception research that explains why these techniques work at a cognitive level. If this category was about the craft of writing, the next is about the science of believing. But the foundation is here, in the scripts. Because no matter how well you understand the science of perception, if you cannot write a sentence that makes someone lean forward, the science has nothing to work with.
Pixar knows this. Arthur Miller knew this. Pete McCabe knows this. And now, after months of hotel room sessions and live audience testing, I know it too.
Once upon a time, there was a consultant who bought a deck of cards. Every day, he practiced alone in hotel rooms. One day, he realized the cards were teaching him something about people. Because of that, he started performing. Because of that, he started writing — scripts, stories, one-sentence descriptions, backstories, references to a world he was building sentence by sentence. Until finally, he stood on a stage and told a story that happened to include magic.
That is the story. The magic is the vehicle. The story is what the audience takes home.